


not as brave as you were at the start

by Asuka Kureru (Askerian)



Series: Bleach daemon AU [4]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Family Secrets, Gen, Same-Sex Daemons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-14
Updated: 2019-04-14
Packaged: 2020-01-13 00:15:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18457556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Askerian/pseuds/Asuka%20Kureru
Summary: "You know, I really do think we're a person, not a thing."They're on the school roof, after Ichigo ditched them in his body. Nobody is around to see them, so Kai didn't bother staying a lioness. It's always hell, faking Rikuto.Kai is a tanuki right now, round and wary, huddled against Kon's leg. Kon crouches down to gather his other half onto his lap, presses the lower part of the face he's borrowing against the fur. It could be fluffier, but it still feels nice.They'remadeto fake daemons; it's one of their secondary purposes. At first soldier pills were created without, just as auxiliary body-movers to act as meat shields, but it was too disturbing for the shinigami they assisted. So then the second generation all had identical german shepherds, or maybe dobermanns, he forgets. They were green, so they wouldn't be traumatizing when they exploded into dust if the soldier pill got destroyed.Kon and Kai's version is the best, latest, brightest.In Kon's lap Kai is a sparrow, a field mouse, a tiny teeny shrew."What I mean is; I'm real.""Ithink," Kai corrects themself a second later, plaintive and hurt; "I think I'm real."





	not as brave as you were at the start

**Author's Note:**

> Same 'verse as the rest, though the other fics deal mostly with Ichigo/Grimmjow interaction. This might be readable as a standalone, though.
> 
> Ichigo - Rikuto, melanistic lioness.  
> Karin - Manatsu, eurasian lynx  
> Yuzu - Asougi, cocker spaniel  
> Isshin - Ayagi, mountain goat

"You know, I really do think we're a person, not a thing."

They're on the school roof, after Ichigo ditched them in his body. Nobody is around to see them, so Kai didn't bother staying a lioness. It's always hell, faking Rikuto.

Kai is a tanuki right now, round and wary, huddled against Kon's leg. Kon crouches down to gather his other half onto his lap, presses the lower part of the face he's borrowing against the fur. It could be fluffier, but it still feels nice.

"Oh yeah, definitely," he agrees, but he doesn't bother to make it cheery and carelessly certain. Because he's not; they're not. "We want things, for one."

"We want _way_ too many things."

"And we like things! And don't like things."

"Like killing," Kai says quietly, and presses a bunny nose against Kon's borrowed stomach. Kon curves his back to surround Kai more. "... or being Rikuto."

They're _made_ to fake daemons; it's one of their secondary purposes. At first soldier pills were created without, just as auxiliary body-movers to act as meat shields, but it was too disturbing for the shinigami they assisted. So then the second generation all had identical german shepherds, or maybe dobermanns, he forgets. They were green, so they wouldn't be traumatizing when they exploded into dust if the soldier pill got destroyed.

Then someone had the bright idea to add an incognito mode; so then the pill daemons could shapeshift into... well, pretty much anything, provided it had been alive at some point. Because the pills needed something to copy off of. Since you need to be a real living being with a real living daemon to have imagination.

Kon and Kai's version is the best, latest, brightest.

It took them three months of accidentally making Ichigo's school think he was just having fun bleaching Rikuto golden and re-dyeing her black before they figured out a way to mess with hormonal levels so Kai would come out darker, and even so the darkest possible fur is seal-brown fading to honeyed, not truly black. But no one wants to look too closely.

In Kon's lap Kai is a sparrow, a field mouse, a tiny teeny shrew.

"What I mean is; I'm real."

"I _think_ ," Kai corrects themself a second later, plaintive and hurt; "I think I'm real."

\--

"Come to think of it, life was so much better inside your body," Kon cries, anguished, his plush body draped across a wide capybara back. Behind him Ichigo and Rikuto are sprawled on their bed, rolling their eyes in tandem like it's a synchronized olympic event. "If I went peeping or stalking you were the one who'd get in trouble... I had nothing to worry about..."

"That isn't even funny," Rikuto grumbles. "If you think it's convincing us to let you go outside, you're dreaming. You're a _plush lion_ , Kon."

Kon and Kai glare sullenly; then Kai snorts, wriggles Kon off their back, and then they're human-shaped.

Ichigo-shaped, really. Hey, it's the form they know best. Kon crows his triumph, felt paws raised; Kai leans down to pick him up and they both grin fatuously. On the bed Ichigo has frozen in pure horror.

" _Oh my god. No_."

"Stop us!" they sing-song in unison.

Rikuto is crouching on the bed like she wants to pounce and doesn't know who at. Her golden eyes are wide, too. "You're naked, you pervert!"

"No," Kon corrects smugly from his perch on his daemon's arm. "No, _you're_ naked, Ichigo, you pervert. Exhibitionist!"

"You sicko freak," Kai continues, doing a little hips-wiggling dance as they move slowly toward the window. "You dick-waving pig!"

Rikuto's eyes pingpong from Kai to Kon; she crouches, tail whipping. Kai flicks his hair to black by habit, then goes back to familiar, natural orange, and makes Ichigo's dumb face make an even dumber grin. Kon cackles. Why did they never do this before? It's _brilliant_.

"You can _tell_ you're a daemon, stupid!" Ichigo splutters, on one knee on the mattress with his hand firm on the window latch. "Who even fucking heard of a human-shaped daemon, what kind of dissectable freak do you wanna make me out to be?!"

\-- Well.

That's not wrong.

A daemon might look like any other animal on a picture, on video. In real life, though, you can always tell.

What if Kai put on a hoodie and didn't show their skin much, would that--

The combat pass trills a hollow warning.

Rikuto feints a swipe of her huge paw at Kai's face, then whaps Kon's squishy body out of their arms as Kai falls on their ass flailing; then she pins Kon's plush body down. (It's so unfair that she can't bring herself to touch Kon when he's in Ichigo's flesh but when he's in anything inanimate suddenly she's fine. For all they know she wouldn't even _react_. Because he _can't encroach onto her soul_ , because he _doesn't have_ a real soul. Or a normal one, at least. Or... whatever.)

Ichigo pops him out with a whack of the combat badge. Kai dissipates; then they're in the pill, blind and deaf, curled together. The exact same kind of being.

Then Kon is in Ichigo's familiar body, and Kai materializes once again. (Humans differentiate so much between the person and the daemon -- their roles, their abilities, their expectations. The only difference between Kon and Kai is Kon is the half that's anchored to the pill.) A housecat this time, bristling. It's black; it has become reflex, even when they're not lions.

"Alright, take care of me until I come back."

"Have fun!" Kon calls out sarcastically.

They just got finished ranting about how much they wanted to go out, and here they are, in the body. If Ichigo and Rikuto really think they're staying put, they're crazy.

"Ugh," Rikuto groans back, and bounces out of the window. "Don't do anything stupid, you hear?!" she yells, and then she's gone after Ichigo, shunpoing into the sky. Kon vaguely wonders how come nobody ever sees her when Ichigo is out in his spiritual body. Maybe Urahara would know. Because daemons are made of spirit particles, not real flesh, true, but those are so dense that the ghost-blindest person cannot miss them, so what gives--

Wait, he doesn't care.

He bounces up on his feet; Kai flips black lion, four heavy paws thudding on the floor beside him, and they grin at each other.

Then Kon furrows his brows.

"... You went male again."

They stare at each other for a second.

Frankly, Kai is goddamned _majestic_ with a mane. Glorious, even. It's not a full mane yet -- Ichigo and Rikuto are young and not completely grown -- but it's _really badass_.

And fluffy.

They shrug at each other; then Kon bends over his daemon to rub his face into their -- his? -- mane and giggles a little. Kai makes a little purring noise, and giggles back, naughty like a child that's getting away with something. They're bouncing out of the window in the next second. People already think Ichigo is the kind of freak who dyes his own daemon, why not put hair implants on her. Maybe she's questioning. Maybe she's just a drag king. People shouldn't judge. Bwahaha.

They start running.

\--

(Then the Grand Fisher hunts them down, then Isshin and Ayagi save them, then they say they always knew Kon-and-Kai weren't Ichigo-and-Rikuto.)

(Kai is an orange-striped tomcat in Kon's arms, huddled small and shaking.)

\--

Being home is strange after that. They still sneak around, a plush lion and a mouse, a lizard, a tiny teeny bat. They don't assume passing behind Ayagi that she didn't see them. Isshin is so casual Kon can't imagine him wielding a blade, so silly with his daughters that the white coat and the deadly seriousness of his and Urahara's faces just... don't...

Isshin doesn't try to talk to them, at any rate, lets them pretend he still knows nothing about anything. It's odd. Heavy.

Kon and Kai think it might be nice to have an adult in the know. Someone serious and dependable, who may actually like them, see them as more than useful tools and hangers-on. Not scary like Urahara. Urahara was _selling them_ , and then he tried to get them back as faulty merchandise to dispose of. He might have given up on that because Kon and Kai proved useful in the end but they don't want to talk to him.

Anyway. Just one, strong, responsible person who likes them. Who they can come to when everything is too much and too scary and...

Isshin and Ayagi really clearly don't want it to be them.

'The protective charm was for you and not Ichigo in the first place' sounds caring and thoughtful until Kon remembers he's in Isshin's actual son's body.

Ichigo and Rikuto are brooding and depressed; there's no talking to them when they get like that. Kon and Kai leave in a huff a lot.

And then the first arrancars attack. Kon and Kai are too far away to even feel it. They only know it afterwards, and boy if they thought Ichigo was brooding before they were wrong. _This_ is brooding.

Every single member of the karate dojo died. And the people at the edge of that neighborhood -- snuffed like candles. Only Tatsuki-san made it out. Kon and Kai are horrified.

Useless, too. Also that.

Neesan and Kiyoha-niisan come back. And the big-boobed beauty. And some guys.

And some more arrancar.

Kon and Kai stay home with Ichigo's sisters and Kai paces like a lioness stalking her territory, being the best Rikuto they have ever been, sick in their stomachs and hearts hammering so fast they feel like hummingbirds caught in their chests.

Ichigo and Rikuto come back home shaken and wild-eyed, Rikuto pressed against his leg and Ichigo never letting go of the skin of her neck.

"What happened?!" Kon hisses, standing human in Ichigo's body for the last few seconds of the night.

Ichigo looks through him with an odd kind of thousand-yard stare.

"Did -- did anyone die," Kai whispers, in his Rikuto-with-a-mane look and it doesn't draw a single comment.

Rikuto and Ichigo blink. Then Ichigo shakes his head no and honestly Kon isn't even sure if he means it as an answer or a generalized 'ugh' headshake or what, and then he steps up right into Kon's face with the glove out.

Pop.

Kon and Kai suppose they're supposed to be grateful they're returned to the plushie body next instead of being forgotten in the pill for the rest of the night. Do Rikuto-and-Ichigo tell Kon-and-Kai _anything_ about what happened? Nope. They say jack shit, just flop into bed like felled trees. Ichigo spends half the night petting his daemon all over and not sleeping a wink and pretending Kon is actually inanimate.

\--

The next day they're gone. Just. Pfft. Wandered off. Didn't even have the decency to leave the body behind.

\--

"Do you know where they went?" Karin asks the ceiling quietly.

It's dark in the girls' bedroom. The drapes let in some moonlight but not much. Yuzu is still cuddling Kon to her chest, breath shuddering even in sleep, with Asougi curled up on his other side to bracket him. Kai is a beetle under her bed, invisible in the dark, though he doesn't enjoy the shape. They both freeze.

Kon just went and talked shit out loud about Ichigo being a shit brother for making Yuzu cry.

He was _so sure_ Karin and Manatsu were asleep.

"We're talking to you, Lion King." It's Manatsu this time around.

Well, um. Fuck. How can his stomach sink so far down when he doesn't even have one?

" _What do I do_ ," he whispers-hisses at his daemon, scurrying up the wall on tiny insect legs.

" _Pretend to be Asougi sleep-talking!_ " Kai hisses-whispers back. Kon clears his lion plushie throat, such as it is.

"I'm gonna put you both in the washing machine on high," Karin threatens, deadpan, as Manatsu growls, not deadpan.

Kon manages to wriggle free of Yuzu's death grip. He peeks over her flank nervously.

Karin is still lying down on her bed, glaring at the ceiling. Manatsu is in sphinx pose and glaring straight at him.

"Umm. Please don't do that. Karin-san. Karin-sama. Your majesty. It would probably hurt. Or break me, and that wouldn't be fun and did I mention it would hurt a lot, and also my daemon might drown? Oh hey, Kai, can you drown?"

"Oh, oh, I could switch to fish." Kai switches to a mouse on the mattress, scurries around Yuzu's legs -- freezes when Manatsu's cold lynx eyes land on him and he flexes the hooked claws at the end of his long murder paws. "... And uh probably cook alive in the hot water which would not be fun either. Um. Hello?"

"... Hello." Karin gives a short, nasal sigh. "So no on Ichigo?"

Kon heaves a sigh, ambles to the edge of Yuzu's bed to sit with his plush legs dangling. "I got no idea. At the best of times he's not great on keeping me in the know, but he just... I think that last fight freaked him out--"

Kai has just transformed into a pygmy goat and headbutted him straight to the head of the bed. Kon flails his limbs, trying to straighten up.

"Hey, what?!"

"Do we even know how much she knows?!"

"--Oh _fudge_."

"I _know_ he fights," Karin says shortly. "I know it's _dangerous_. I know he never _tells_ anyone _anything_ , he's _exactly like Dad that way!_ "

Kon and Kai wince; Kai turns into a greyer, smaller lynx, mirroring Manatsu, and cat-loafs tightly against Kon's plush body. "I honestly don't know who this comparison is meaner to," Kon says, but gently.

Behind them, Yuzu stirs. "Karin-chan?" she mumbles, and Kon and Kai freeze. They stare at each other -- stare at Karin, who has pushed herself up on one elbow and is staring back, at Manatsu who's washing himself with short, frustrated twitches of his head, ignoring them like he doesn't care what they do.

Which, they have spent a lot of time as various cats recently. Karin-and-Manatsu _absolutely_ care about what they do.

It is not their place to tell Ichigo's family things Ichigo won't tell them. Things their _father_ won't tell them. Or tell Ichigo. It's not their place to scare the girls for no reason.

This family is choked stupid on secrets.

"Are we _safer_ if we don't know?" Karin asks, strangled, plaintive like he never thought she could get. Begging him to tell it to her straight.

And. Kon and Kai don't know, they tell themselves, but that's a lie. Yuzu might feel happier not knowing there's anything to worry about, but he just watched her cry herself to sleep. She knows. She doesn't know the details, but she knows. And yeah, sure, she can't dodge a hollow coming her way whether she knows they exist or not, so it might be better if she didn't have to fret about it happening on top.

But he can't tell Karin and then ask her to lie to her sister too. His cotton guts curdle just thinking about it.

Kon watches Yuzu turn on her back, pause and blinks as she stares back at his daemon. She blinks at Manatsu on the other bed, then back at Kai, then looks around for his person. Kon takes a deep breath his cloth body absolutely has no need for and raises a paw.

"Hey. Um. Hello."

They have to spend the next five minutes convincing her she's not still dreaming. Gives him a little time to work on his speech.

\--

It takes two months for Ichigo to come back home. Two months of increasingly drawn little sisters and aggressively careless father.

At the end of the first month Yuzu starts carrying Kon everywhere. She brings him to school in her bag. They watch TV together, all six of them on a single couch, Kai wrapped around Manatsu and Asougi as a big fluffy sheepdog or a capybara or -- sometimes, when the movie is saddest, a black, maned lion.

Two weeks into the second month their dad comes in unexpectedly and Kai, by pure reflex, switches housefly and hides under the couch, Kon goes still and lifeless on Yuzu's lap.

Yuzu's lower lip wobbles. Asougi whimpers. Off to the side by the connecting door with the clinic Isshin and Ayagi ogle them weird, and start grinning that fake grin, like they don't know if they saw what they think they saw but they're gonna pretend they didn't and.

Karin is tense like a strung bow, Manatsu's fur is up all the way down his back.

He can't. They can't.

Kai reappears, a sleek little housecat in bright, Ichigo-orange and tiger stripes.

He's trembling. They both are. (Kon isn't trembling physically but in his pill he quakes. Defective product, acting out of clearly set bounds. He could lose everything.)

Asougi hops to his feet, wags his tail and the whole of his butt with anxious energy, drapes a protective paw on Kai's small back. Kai feels naked, not warm enough. Isshin still isn't saying anything.

He wants more fur. Bigger. He doesn't feel Rikuto-big, he never feels Rikuto-big, imposing and daring anyone to deny her the space she claims, but he wants. They want a bit bigger than that, they want fluffy enough to cuddle with, just like Asougi, they want a touch of Manatsu's poise, they want -- they want.

The markings could be less stark, more faded. The mane -- there could be more. Needs to be more. They flick and adjust, trembling and claws out. Not to fight but to cling.

Karin and Yuzu don't look at Kon at all. Just at their dad. Daring him to say a thing.

Kon burst out in tears.

"Whoa, hey--"

"Oh nooo, Kon-kun, don't, I'll cry, I'll cry--"

"Leave them alone, you big _jerks!_ "

"It's okay, it's okay, what's wrong--"

It's a mess.

Kon and Kai later estimate that they cried for about thirty whole and entire minutes and so did Yuzu; that at some point in the middle Isshin came and sat on the end of the couch and Yuzu passed him to Karin and went to cry on her father's lap and Kon kept crying in Karin's tight grip even though she totally completely for sure didn't have wet eyes either.

That Isshin said he was sorry, that Yuzu said she missed her brother, and she missed when nobody lied to her, and Isshin said he was sorry again and told her, gently, that he wanted his daughters to be happy, but he could see they weren't, and he was so very, very sorry.

And Karin said she and Yuzu had been developing a signals code in case of invisible bad guys and they'd been roleplaying not reacting when creepy things showed up with Kai because Kai could, actually, shapeshift into a hollow (without the hole though) even though it made him feel hideously wrong for hours on end afterwards, and where _was_ Ichigo and. And it wasn't Kon's fault for telling them, it was Isshin's fault for not. And sometimes it felt like he was the only one who was _there_.

Kai purrs and purrs and purrs and grooms until it feels like he swallowed his weight in fur, his throat gone rusty-raw.

When everyone is done crying their heart out and cuddling and the ball of daemons separates, Yuzu is the first to get up from the couch, wiping at her face with both hands. Karin watches her father with tired doubt and huge eye bags and she squeezes Kon onto her lap.

Isshin looks down at him, face grave and drawn, just as tired. His hand rises and Kon flinches. Then he rests it on Kon's plush head.

"I'm glad you were there for them," he says quietly, as Ayagi nudges at Kai's flank with her nose. "You're a good man, Kon."

Kon may or may not fling himself at his own daemon as Kai jumps up on the couch and cry in his fur for another ten minutes. Karin and Isshin leave him alone, at any rate, like they can tell he's just wringing it out, like he just wants to be alone with himself for a little while.

At dinner that night Yuzu puts up a fifth chair with phone books, for Kon-and-Kai to hang out while they eat. Kai briefly turns into a little monkey, for the hands, but it's just not fluffy enough. He goes back to the orange cat.

(Ichigo's chair stays empty.)

\--

Ichigo comes home injured and so stuck in his head that he doesn't even notice Kon is hanging out with Karin in the living room. Kon and Kai decide to avoid him at dinner as long as he's so broody, because it's gonna be a pain. They'll talk to him tomorrow.

Tomorrow arrives and Inoue-san is gone.

"You may as well use his body," Isshin says with a sigh the morning after Ichigo and his friends have left like tornadoes, and picks him up and carries him to Urahara's.

He puts the plush lion in the front pocket of his doctor coat; it's the first thing Kon sees when he sits up in flesh.

Kai turns into Rikuto and immediately turns back into a smaller, defensive, normal-colored lynx. There's nobody at Urahara's who doesn't know he's not Ichigo.

They're left behind, again. To man the fort, even though nobody really thinks Kon could make much of a difference. He can feel that while the fight is happening somewhere else Isshin and Urahara and the rest are expecting it to backfire, or something else weird to happen. Kon is not much firepower, but he's still _some_ firepower.

The old guys go to some other room to discuss things. Kon and Kai are left in the front room with the kids, side-eyeing each other warily. Jinta's and Ururu's daemons aren't settled either; Jinta's tries to draw Kai into a contest of biggest-baddest, but Kai's heart isn't in it. Cape buffalos are just too big today.

"So what's the plan?" he asks the second Isshin comes back out, but Isshin only frowns, shakes his head.

"It's mostly going to be down to the Captain-Commander," Ayagi says eventually when Kon was starting to think they weren't going to say even that much. "There's a lot of countermeasures he can take but none he's been sharing with us."

"...Oh. So, hurry up and wait."

"Yep!" Ayagi says cheerfully, and headbutts Kai out of her way as she prances out, throwing a distracted goodbye to the kids.

"You won't be needed for a while, and the girls are in school by now. Be back by seven at the latest," Isshin tells him on the front steps, and turns away, Ayagi on his heels. "Ah, I think I'll close the clinic today..."

Kon and Kai aren't sure what they want to do. There's school? It has started by now but they can still make it to the second period. They should maybe go and make sure Ichigo's attendance isn't completely demolished. He only just went back after two months...

They should. They don't.

They drift through the town and stop at arcades and laugh but never for long. They watch pretty ladies that they never approach. Everything feels heavy, poised at the edge of a precipice. The only thing that helps ward off the cold is Kai going long-haired cat so Kon can cuddle him to his for-now human throat, so that Kai's warm body can cover him from neck to his stomach. Because he's big like this. He's a big nice tomcat. Not savage and shy like Manatsu; a friendly housecat that just wants to purr and be petted and play.

Ichigo had some money in his pocket so he gets to pay for their lunch. The afternoon drifts by the same way.

He figures out classes have been out for a little bit when someone barks " _Kurosaki-kun!_ " at him.

A woman with a ponytail and her herding dog daemon are charging down the street at him, glaring hot. Kon freezes, caught between running and faking Ichigo but Kai's claws are caught in his uniform top and he's bristled from nose to tail.

"Kurosaki, what do you think teachers are?! What do you think _school_ is?! You were gone two months and--"

The daemon freezes, catches his human's pants leg. She freezes too, scowling in confusion. Stares at Kai in his arms, who is very much a daemon and very much _not_ Ichigo's daemon and...

They could pretend they're Ichigo cuddling somebody else's daemon in public... while his... own daemon is somehow absent...

Okay, no mortifying Ichigo, even though he would totally deserve it. Kon gives his most harmless grin. "Aheh. Do you mean Kurosaki _Ichigo_? That's, uh, that's my cousin. Dont worry about it, we know we look similar, no harm done, good luck finding him--"

"Wait _just one minute_ ," Ochi-sensei says, catching his elbow as he was turning away to run off. "You -- that's our school uniform."

Crap. "Uh -- yeah, I didn't have any clean clothes left and he lent me -- I moved in with them recently so I'm not enrolled anywhere right now and--"

"Ichigo's cousin?" the daemon says, squinting, sniffing at Kon's leg. "You sure smell like him. Names?"

"Uh. Kon, and this is Kai. Nice to meet you--"

"Nice to meet you. You're staying with them, you said?" Ochi-sensei says, still frowning. "I think it's time for a home visit."

... Haaa haha ha. Ha. They are so boned.

At least Isshin and Ayagi's faces are fun to watch when Ochi-sensei barges in to ask where Ichigo is, the real reason he wasn't in school for _two months_ , and why he's been such a sullen ball of misery today and what _is_ going on.

"You're a pretty nice teacher," Kon says in one of the lulls without thinking, and Ochi-sensei turns to blink at him.

Isshin has been weaving a story about Ichigo's medical-but-not-hospital-worthy woes that she has been poking suspicious holes into, but she calms down there, sighs. Smiles.

"Say, Kurosaki-kun. Will you be enrolling in our school as well?"

It jars him that she knows he's not Ichigo and she still uses this name to mean Kon.

"Oh, uh -- I've been homeschooling and..."

"You could make friends, though! You looked so depressed earlier in town I thought you were your cousin," she adds gently, with just an edge of teasing. "Would you like to be in your cousin's class? I could arrange that, if you wanted."

For a moment Kon wants that like burning. Or maybe even another class, his own classmates and friends that he doesn't have to share, even though it's a bit like freefall to have to make his own way, create his own bonds without the scaffold of Ichigo's to support him.

He'd love to be in the next class over and see Ichigo and the rest during breaks. Living his own life, in his own body.

But it's not. It's not his body.

Suddenly he doesn't like that Kai's a cat again, that his fur makes a mane. He wants a lizard, something that hides and doesn't cuddle anything, doesn't get petted and doesn't miss his people. It's hard not to switch back.

She thinks he's just a normal teenage boy who's a normal part of this normal family. She thinks he should want more of that normal life, and she's right, and he can't. They can't.

"I... don't know how to ask this," Ichigo's teacher is asking, much calmer than before. Her brow furrows with awkward anguish. "They're _really_ not dyeing their hair, are they. I always _wanted_ to believe your son, but--"

Isshin's sudden bark of laughter startles Kon. "Oh, it's definitely natural! They're little delinquents entirely without help. Look, there's Ichigo's baby pictures--"

When the air rings with a pulse of power and Ochi-sensei falls in a boneless slump, Kon feels relieved.

It presses down on him heavy like a mountain and outside in the street cars crash into poles and upstairs Karin yells her sister's name and then falls in turn and Kon knows if he were a normal person he would faint too. If he were a human with the same level of reiatsu he has now he would faint, but he's not, he's a pill. He's a thing. Things don't faint.

But Isshin sheds his gigai on the other couch facing Ochi-sensei and says, "I've got to go," and Ayagi butts her face against Kai's fluffy face and says, "Take care of your sisters," absently like she's not even thinking about it and they leave at a dead run.

Isshin has never called him Ichigo.

Isshin has never called him Ichigo.

Kon scrunches up his face and squints through sudden tears and Kai jumps out of his arms and he's a lion, and then a fox, and then a mouse and a guard dog, and then he's the big fluffy cat again with the messy orange fur and the bottle-brush tail and the claws, the friendly cat who loves people so much for supposedly being such a contrary, secretive beast, the one who has a mane like a lion.

The spiritual pressure keeps pulsing down on them. Kon takes the oven mitts before he goes to lay Karin and Yuzu down in a single bed, and carries their daemons to nestle between them safe and sound, moving them like he's handling uranium. He's had his daemon touched before and as a soldier pill it didn't hurt or anything but he still felt small and invaded. He doesn't want to do that to them, even if they'll never know.

He only gets his consciousness knocked back into his pill twice, but Ichigo's body never chokes him up, and Kai never comes back as anything else.

They wait.

Together with their silent little not-sisters, they wait.

\--

"I've got to go to school..."

Ichigo is sprawled face down on his bed, uniform pants and undershirt on. Rikuto is sprawled in a half-circle on the floor, her head in the cupboard.

They've woken up from their coma two weeks ago. Haven't seen a ghost or a hollow since. (Kon hasn't seen a single hollow either but that's probably because he's been seeing arrancar. He almost shat out his stuffing.)

Since then Ichigo and Rikuto have been Mr. Normal Teenage Student to a T. Kon was honestly expecting the other shoe to drop sooner.

"You really do!" he sings back without mercy. If anyone deserves compassion it's Ichigo, but if anyone is only gonna wallow worse if he gets it it's _also Ichigo_. "Get up, you lazy oaf. Ochi-sensei will be sad and then I'll have to vanquish you."

"... Yeah, what's that about Ochi? She asked me about my cousin the other day, I had to make up a whole thing about how you'd gone back home."

... Ugh. "Nothing. She's caring and fierce and also has all the appeal of an older woman--"

"You sound like Mizuiro, gross."

" _You_ ," Kon returns, drawing himself up with all his unimpressive plushie height, "sound like a philistine. Get dressed already." He digs out a scarf from the drawers he's perched on and lobs it at Ichigo's head. It's mid-december, it's gonna be kind of cold. Ichigo and Rikuto do not have an impressive coat of fur or even a passable mane, so who cares if the scarf is hideous. Isshin knitted it with love.

And parental embarrassment. Loving embarrassment.

"... Do you wanna go for us," Rikuto mumbles from the cupboard, so muffled that Kon isn't even entirely sure he heard her properly.

He looks at Kai, who looks back with a wince and then hops down onto the floor to go rubbing his side along the whole of Rikuto's dark flank.

Ichigo doesn't talk, not even to tell her to shut up, just buries his face deeper in his pillow. If he can't even pretend he's fine and his own daemon is just being a drama queen then they must really, really not be happy. Kon jumps across to him, too. "Ichigo," he says dripping with sympathy, "you sad pillow diddler."

Then he pauses, then he swallows 'without any reiryoku if you leave your body you will die'. It's true but they all here know it. Pointing it out would only be unkind.

He pats Ichigo's messy head with his felt paw. Ichigo is allowed to wish for impossible things. But there are several reasons why this one's impossible.

"How can I go as you when I've been settled for a month."

There's a pause. Then Ichigo and Rikuto lift their heads in sync to stare, blinking their confusion.

"... You what."

Kon buffs cloth nails against his chest. Truth is, it's impossible for a mod soul to settle. He did it anyway. He's delirious with amazed glee and fear that this is a mistake, that they just deluded themselves. "Settled? That thing people do when they become an adult? Yep."

"... Actually it's a thing when people become _adolescents_ ," Rikuto points out slowly, still staring at Kai with heavy disbelief. "Asougi and Manatsu settled _six months ago_ , and they're _eleven_."

Kai growls quietly back and starts grooming his fluffy tail. "Oh, shut up."

"Which, considering your interest in _breasts_ we kind of assumed--"

"Ugh!" Kon jumps on Ichigo's face, presses his cheeks in with both paws. "Shut up, we weren't _babies_. You could congratulate us, you know!"

Ichigo pushes himself up on his elbow, cracks a tiny smile. It's not a great one but it looks sincere; Kon will take it. Harrumphing, he crosses his arms and turns away pointedly.

"My bad, Kon, Kai." He smiles a little wider; Kon can hear it in his voice. "Congratulations. We'll take you to the temple to make your offerings, if you wanna."

...Oh. Kon's stomach warms up with something squirmy that could be either gratitude and love or total embarrassment. He punches Ichigo's knee without looking back at him. On the floor Kai is only grooming harder.

"That'd... be okay," he says, and his voice cracks from the awkwardness.

He punches Ichigo's knee again. Rikuto throws a heavy paw around Kai and drags him into her chest to lick a long stripe up his forehead and down his spine to his tail. Kai chirps in surprise and then goes boneless against her with embarrassing swiftness.

"But in the interest of fairness and transparency, Karin and Yuzu took us already."

Rikuto freezes mid-lick.

" _What_."

Ichigo and Rikuto look baffled, a little alarmed too.

Kon could tell them he _had_ to come clean to the girls, or he could tell them he slipped up and it wasn't his fault. Could even tell them _someone_ had to be their big brother, and Ichigo didn't seem interested.

It'd be unfair. It'd be mean.

"They're really kind of great," he says instead. "Your little sisters."

"... Yeah," Ichigo says after long, thinking seconds. "Yeah."

He doesn't ask how much they know, because this family is Really Stupid With Secrets, eleventeenth verse, same as the first, and Kon is _really_ done with it.

"They know you're a shinigami and your dad is a shinigami and I'm a pill that is sometimes a plush and sometimes you, and they also know about evil ghosts even the not so evil anymore ones and how you had to go ham on some assholes recently and they're done and dusted but some smaller assholes might still show up but your sisters have got pretty good strategies for cutting and running if anything actually hungry comes through and you should maybe advise or something but anyway you gotta go to school. Go to school, you truant. You delinquant. You _virgin_."

Ichigo gives a long, dizzy blink. "You're also a virgin... Aren't you _oh my god_ I don't even want to know with _which body_."

"Don't be silly!" Kon retorts. "It's a state of the mind and I have never been pure and virginal in my _life_ and you still blush and look away when you see boobs. _Virgin_. Cherry boy. Put this scarf on."

"I don't have my _jacket_ on," Ichigo retorts with irritation as he finally stands up to hunt it down. "It's not that cold anyway--"

"It's the middle of december! It absolutely is that cold! I'm told. Probably."

"Like you can tell with all that fluff on! What kind of cat even are you? A persian mutt?"

" _I_ ," Kai proclaims, drawing himself up nobly, "am a Maine Coon, which is the biggest _and_ friendliest breed of housecat and I am _not even a little bit_ a mutt or a weird anomaly of nature like _some_ people, _thank_ you."

Ichigo rolls his eyes, but he's smiling as he finishes zipping up his jacket and moves toward the door. He picks up Kon on the way, casually putting him on his shoulder. "Yeah? Sounds nice."

Rikuto coughs. " _Boring_." Then she catches Kai by the scruff of the neck and follows them to the stairs. Kon boggles at her over Ichigo's shoulder. Kai's fluffy tail is curled up between his legs; his butt almost brushes the floor.

"Um--"

"You say the girls know you're around and I'm gonna get yelled at for not eating enough breakfast if I want not to be late. So. Distraction."

"You're going to do something _horrible_ to us, aren't you," Kon asks with guilty fascination. "Throw us to the literal lions."

Rolling his eyes, Ichigo squishes his head, but almost gently.

He hesitates three steps from the bottom, just high enough that they can't see him from the kitchen corner.

"You... said they knew, right. About me."

His voice is a bit strange, like he's nervous -- like he's scared of how they'll react, but also like, maybe... Maybe it was heavy. Maybe he's glad the weight is gone. Maybe after they read him the riot act for hiding these things for so long it'll be better.

Maybe, Kon thinks, like he won't have to pretend quite so much that he's got nothing worth grieving over.

He's probably gonna do it anyway, Kon is sure. But now if he mopes too much Kon can rat him out to his sisters.

"Yeah," Kon replies gently, and leans on his side on the slope of his shoulder, his head propped up against Ichigo's jaw. "They know _everything_."

A brief pause.

"Especially where your porn books are buried."


End file.
